Advanced wireless networks require significant hardware acceleration in order to perform functions such as beamforming and path searching. To address these data processing requirements, CDMA systems often implement these algorithms directly with a dedicated ASIC or an on-chip coprocessor unit. Although this approach offers the highest potential performance, it carries significant design risks and is very inflexible to changes in standards and algorithms.
These and other algorithms usually involve multiplication operations. One of the limiting factors in a high performance multiplication engine is the rate at which data can be supplied to the engine from a register file or a memory. The speed and width of data buses can be increased, but at the expense of chip area and power dissipation. A further factor is that data is often reused in digital signal processing algorithms, such as FIR digital filters.
Accordingly, there is a need for improved multiplication engines and multiplication methods.